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Saturday, April 19, 2014

IPL7: Notes #1

The 7th edition of the Indian Premier League has commenced outside India, in an area which is

known for being the hub of many fixing activities

and the global headquarters of ICC

and the current "home-ground" for a country whose players are not picked for playing in the tournament.

1st round of games have taken place. Nothing much to read on the cricketing front given the very narrow sample size currently available. Hence not making any comments on any of the team performances, yet. However special mentions for

Glenn Maxwell, living upto the million dollar hype

Yuvraj Singh, for shrugging off those cricket fans idiots who threw stones at his house after the World T20 final, and

little Parthiv Patel, for dispatching the ball into orbit

Now for the main agenda items. Something very weird is going on with the coverage here. The rights are with Sony who earlier used to telecast it on Max. Then they launched a dedicated sports channel Sony Six. Also someone realized that having Hindi commentary would reach out to a far bigger audience. So till last year Max had English commentary and newly launched Six had Hindi. This time they have inter-changed it. Any particular reason? Can't be just to increase viewership for Six because that would definitely happen come June-July with the Football World Cup.

Also Star Sports has well and truly ambushed the telecast. Paid live telecast and free "5 minute delayed" telecast are available online on starsports.com . Also includes lots of marketing for the Star group. This has to be the heights of ambush marketing. Sony having to telecast Star Sports logo.

However the weirdest coverage is by cricinfo. They have stopped calling it the IPL all together. All coverage is of the Indian T20 league with the teams beings referred not by their name but as Jaipur T20 or Bangalore T20 etc. Now BCCI and online text commentary sites have been at loggerheads for quite sometime but this is weird. Also does it have anything to do with the Star Sports and ESPN split? After all cricinfo is owned by ESPN.

Random Notes

Where did these cheerleaders arrive from? Weren't they supposed to be banned or is the ban applicable only in matches held in India?

There is now a camera on the cap of the umpire? How much more scrutiny are we going to subject the poor umpires to?